How often do three titles coalesce into a relatively coherent expression of the experience of reading them? I was going to call this review “Revisiting Pregnancy Narratives After Three Years of Motherhood” because something made me delve back into this topic almost exactly three years after the birth of my son, but somehow Nobody Told Me, After Birth, and Like a Mother was just perfect. Even (especially?) in its semi-coherence.

I feel blessed to live in an age where such a wealth of literature (fiction and non-) is being produced to counter some of the crap that our culture has converged around as our vision of motherhood. There are precursors, yes, and I’ve written about some of my favorite pregnancy books for writers previously, but Nobody Told Me, After Birth, and Like a Mother spoke hard to my mother self, writer or not, and I wanted to share why.

Nobody Told Me

I’ll admit that when my husband gave Nobody Told Me by Hollie McNish for Mother’s Day “because it was on your to-read list” I had absolutely no memory of having ever heard of this book. While people did tell me I’d experience “pregnancy brain,” no one told me (that I remember anyway) my ability to retain information would be permanently altered (or at least that’s my experience so far).

There were so many thing no one told me (and which I cannot remember) that reading McNish’s contemporaneous journal of her pregnancy and first three years of motherhood made me feel wonderfully immersed in that world again. Her voice is gently honest, and whether she’s recounting the everyday indignities (like having no one offer you a seat on the bus when you’re ginormous) or sweetnesses (“When no one is watching, I feel amazing. Like that gigantic, ripe, juicy magic peach”) you’re endeared to her (and, if you’ve been pregnant, to your own memories both good and bad). She’s also deeply generous to the people around her—taking the necessary moments to look at why her grandmother tries to spare her the “embarrassment” of walking around her village pregnant and unwed or when McNish takes pity on her father who is helpless around her child and examines why his generation of men is that way and all the things they’re missing as a result.

I loved that she included her (basically unedited I think) poems in this text, even though I did not always love the poems, because they made me love even more this huge body of work I created while pregnant that I’ve been somewhat embarrassed by (both because I’ve been adding a derogatory “mommy poetry” label to it and because I was new to poetry so a lot of it really isn’t good).

Whether credit goes to me for finding this book (which will be issued in the US this November) or to my husband for having the memory to get it into my hands, I don’t care. I’m just glad I read it and that I read it right now.

Like a Mother

How strange and wonderful it felt to find Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy in a newsletter for a local bookstore because Angela Garbes is a local author and though our worlds have not overlapped, I feel like our experiences have. There was not as much revolutionary science as I hoped in this book (partially because I did get to read Penny Simkin and some others who are trying to give pregnant women actual information while I was pregnant), but I still loved the book and I learned a lot of things. Most importantly I learned to trust my own experience.

Garbes is witty and straightforward as she recounts the kinds of stories I have only ever shared with closely trusted family members (maybe I should be better about breaking the “nobody told me” cycle but I might let Garbes do it for me). From breastfeeding to sex to the importance of being cared for during pregnancy and birth, this book touched so many memories (and nerves) for me.

Through the gory (fascinating) details of the function of the placenta to the beauty of the ways that life and death coexist in a woman’s body as she carries with her forever the cells of motherhood, I felt grief while reading this book and I felt empowered. Most of all I felt normal, a sensation that is far too uncommon in these somewhat lonely days of parenting.

After Birth

Though it was Garbes who wrote about how parents “lean into the utter obliteration of their previous selves,” it’s Elisa Albert who dives all the way into exploring that experience in her novel, After Birth. The thing I love most about this book (among many) is how deeply angry new mother Ari is. It’s something I’ve seen lambasted in reviews, which I understand because it’s directly in opposition to the sweet, loving acceptance we all want to think our mothers immediately felt when we were born, but it’s fucking real. Especially in a world where too many of us are too alone in this event that changes our lives completely.

Ari grapples with a birth that did not go how she wanted it to (this is a euphemism because no one except other mothers really wants to even hear about shitty birth experiences), a body that’s irrevocably changed (torn apart), and a community that either does not or cannot meet her needs (in many cases because they aren’t even there). In short, it’s an all-too-familiar tale, but one that many women suffer in silence. I loved how angry Ari was because anger is the last thing we want moms to express and yet it’s a very real emotion (and one that doesn’t get better if we don’t feel entitled to even feel it).

After Birth can be as uncomfortable to read as the title is to imagine. It’s also funny and dark and real and I want all of my friends to read it and then I want us to say, collectively, all the taboo things about parenting REALLY FUCKING LOUD.

If you want to get real about pregnancy and early parenting, pick up a copy of Nobody Told Me, Like a Mother, and After Birth from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Pregnancy is a weird time. My body is changing radically but only incrementally. I can’t bear to be out of sight of my husband. The world is full of advice and stories of their own experiences (which I need but is mostly misplaced). I’m full of worries that seem ridiculous but mean everything—if I can’t feel the baby moving is it okay? will I ever write again? And I’m too tired, mostly, to read properly and too tired to do anything but read.

So when someone recommended The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood by Louise Erdrich, it sounded like the answer to all my needs, and as I read this book, I realized its open, meditative nature makes it a book that can be enjoyed by parents and non-parents, writers and non-writers, and anyone who loves nature.

Conceiving a Life

“To make love with the desire for a child is to move the act out of its singularity, to make the need of the moment an eternal wish. But of all passing notions, that of a human being for a child is perhaps the purest in the abstract, and the most complicated in reality.” – Louise Erdrich

I wanted this baby so much. My husband and I have been talking about starting a family for a couple of years now and in many ways the last nineteen years have been us getting ready to be parents. But neither of us had any idea that we’d get pregnant so easily. So I felt less prepared embarking on this adventure than I wanted to, even acknowledging that there wasn’t going to be much I could do to prepare. Hell, I’m still convinced that conception, rather than science, is magic.

I very much enjoyed that many of the essays in the book are actually an amalgam of Erdrich’s three pregnancies. She never names which daughter a section is about, but acknowledges how different her children are. This gives the book a stunning openness because it’s non didactically about what a pregnancy or parenting should be, it’s about that moment with that child. But because the child is never named, the essays can be about any child, and unlike so much of the advice offered by others (which carries an air of justifying that person’s own choices) these stories and fragments can be taken in part or in whole—however the reader wants.

Fear

“The self will not be forced under, nor will the baby’s needs gracefully retreat…. To keep the door to the other self—the writing self—open, I scratch messages on the envelopes of letters I can’t answer, in the margins of books I’m too tired to review.” – Louise Erdrich

Fear is the biggest harbinger of the unknown, and for me that fear has centered around blend of losing myself and of being inadequate. I know (pregnancy has already shown me) that my relationship with the things I love—my writing and reading—will necessarily change, but if I let them go (or if they are wrenched from me or change into unrecognizable beings), I don’t know who that makes me. At the same time I will be responsible for the care and well being of another human in a way that seems so all consuming…

So reading about the way Erdrich balances the parent self and the writing self—and the ways she copes with what will not balance—was extremely helpful to me. This book showed me it’s possible, at times, to write with a baby in one arm when neither urge will retreat. It showed me too how much the act of raising a child can feed the writing self, even when writing is not possible. Perhaps the hardest part of this—my biggest fear—has been about losing myself to the pregnancy, to the child, to parenting, but Erdrich has shown me that I will make this my own and that who I am actually shapes my own experience. It’s reassuring.

Advice

“Most of the instructions given to pregnant women is as chirpy and condescending as the usual run of maternity clothes…. We are too often treated like babies having babies when we should be in training, like acolytes, novices to high priestesshood, like serious applicants for the space program.” – Louise Erdrich

I believe in the well meaning nature of others. I believe I have the power (and sometimes responsibility) to witness their stories in order to help them feel whole. I know how healing and validating that can be. But right now, I want to—can only really—focus on me. Because this thing that is happening to me and my body and my husband and my home and our family—it is the biggest thing that will ever happen to us (at least until death) and while some people have the gift for sharing their experience without trying to smother mine, most don’t. Which is challenging for me, because I believe in the well meaning nature of others…

Writing

“Part of a writer’s task is to put her failings at the service of her pen.” – Louise Erdrich

My biggest fear throughout this pregnancy and really in life is that I will at some point fail to be a writer (and thus lose myself). Because writing is the one way in which I express my true nature. The page is the place where the complexities, ambiguities, and conflicts of my thoughts can coexist and complement and make sense. Writing helps me think. It calms me. It’s made me who I am.

I stepped down from the board of Hugo House to prepare for having a family. My reading slowed down when I got pregnant because all I could do was sleep. I even felt like I stopped writing except for these silly scraps of what I thought were drippily sentimental pregnancy poetry. Now I’m finding that pregnancy has given me a new vocation, one I tried at in high school and then abandoned—pregnancy is turning me into a poet. And while I don’t yet have the skills to polish those scribblings, I cherish this new project and the idea that while my writing might be changing, I am still a writer.

Sleep (Where I’ve Been)

“Sleep is the only truly palatable food at first. I sleep hungrily, angry, needy for sleep, jealous for sleep, devouring it and yet resentful of the time it takes away from conscious life.” – Louise Erdrich

I’ve had a couple of inquiries in the past couple of days about where I’ve been and if I’m okay—inquiries that meant the world to me. I am okay, if you call okay spending most of my available hours either napping, sleeping, or planning when next I’ll get to do one of the two. Turns out that growing another human is EXHAUSTING. But I’m a champion sleeper from way back, so I’m trying to relish the excuse. Even when it takes me away from things I love.

That’s to say that these reviews will continue to be erratic. And they may continue to focus on pregnancy for awhile. See, I tried to write a review that wasn’t about pregnancy (because I know other people have other things on their minds) but it’s where I’m at. It’s the biggest thing going for me right now. And I can’t really think about anything else.

We heard our baby’s heartbeat for the first time on Friday. A rapid little 130bpm. And afterwards I couldn’t think of any other thing.

I’ll be back here when I can because you matter to me and writing these reviews matter to me. I’ll even continue to strive to write the non-pregnancy review. But if you need something to keep you occupied and inspired in the meantime, go read The Blue Jay’s Dance, it’s worth a read and a reread and another reread. You might even discover how much of the book speaks to the non-pregnant 🙂

You may have first heard of Edan Lepucki and her novel, California, when Stephen Colbert featured the book on his show as part of his coverage of the Amazon-Hachette debacle. California was not being sold on Amazon at the time and he wanted to push the book to the top of the New York Times bestseller list by getting people to buy it from independent bookstores.

But as much as I was watching that battle and I support buying books from indies, that is not why I wanted to read California. See, I’d read Lepucki’s debut novella, If You’re Not Yet Like Me, which is reason enough to buy her next book, but in addition, she’s been really kind to me on Twitter in the few instances where I’ve had a reason to reach out to her (even when I somewhat brashly questioned the use of the term “debut novelist” for someone who’d previously written a novella), plus I love dystopian fiction.

Little did I know that I would love California for a completely different reason and that I would be reading it at the exact right moment in my life. Because the story focuses around Cal and Frida who have made their way out to the woods to live off the land after a series of weather and social events disrupted the societal core. And not too far into the book, Frida discovers she is pregnant.

Pregnancy on My Mind

The timing on my reading this book really couldn’t be more perfect. My husband gave me my copy (diligently sourced from a local indie and autographed to boot) on Christmas day this year–the day after the doctor confirmed we are pregnant with our first child. So while there are loads of interesting things to talk about regarding California, I can’t quite get over how much it spoke to me right where I was at in that moment.

Pregnancy as a Catalyst

I’ve read books before and since where pregnancy was a plot point, but never have I seen it used so effectively as a catalyst to action. Cal and Frida are relatively comfortable living in their small shack with their garden. They have no contact with the outside world except for a nearby family who befriends them and August, a trader who stops by on a semi-regular basis with all sorts of odds and ends. When the family vacates their home (for reasons I’m not going to reveal here) Cal and Frida move in.

But other than that move, they are leading a comfortable (enough) life and there is no reason for the story to move forward. Until Frida suspects she is pregnant. And suddenly, whether it’s for want of resources, fear of birthing her child on her own, or just the sheer desire for community, she sets out after August one day on her own. That quest, although she does return to take Cal with her, sets the two of them on the path to see what life is like outside their Eden. And I can’t tell you any of the things that happen or who they might meet along the way, but it’s so worth reading. I didn’t love love the ending, which is why I only gave the book four stars, but it was right for the story, and you have to respect that.

The thing that was different from how pregnancy is handled in other books is that Lepucki got inside the (somewhat complex) hormonal changes and related motivations of the characters. It wasn’t just “pregnancy=change.” And as a result, I could relate to Frida’s sense of vulnerability and her quest for community. I feel vulnerable all the time right now in a way I never thought I would. I also feel fiercely protective of myself as a guardian of this little bean (who is less of a bean and more of a baby every day) inside of me. Those feelings are so strong, so primal, and Lepucki does a beautiful job of using them to their best narrative potential.

While a lot of things happen in this book, it’s this really rich character development that I enjoyed most and where Lepucki finds her own blend of literary and genre fiction.

How Pregnancy Changes Others

I’ll admit, one of the most fascinating parts of this book for me was Cal’s reaction to Frida’s pregnancy. It mirrored and helped me understand my husband’s reaction to ours. Cal is someone who is relatively comfortable living off the land and he was the instigator for getting the two of them out of the city in the first place. There were definite echoes of The Parable of the Sower in how crucial cultivation was to survival. But what was interesting was how much his provider instincts were triggered by the pregnancy and how protective he became of Frida.

I know (because my husband tells me, because he’s the one reading the pregnancy books right now) that his hormones are changing too to accommodate for our new situation, but I did not realize how much he would feel compelled to take care of me (whether it’s fetching that 40th glass of water or making basically all the meals based on whatever weird requirements I have that minute) and how visceral his need to protect me would become (don’t barrel up and down 12th Ave, really, please). I didn’t realize how much he was ready to be a dad or what that would even look like.

As much as I feel like I need to understand that what I’m going through is normal, it was equally helpful to me to understand more of the context for what he’s experiencing right now and I learned so much from Cal.

Pregnancy is the Future

That isn’t some weird, mystical prediction or assertion that everyone should go have babies now, but one of the things I’ve most wanted to do since getting pregnant is to sit down and watch Children of Men again. Because while I very much wanted to have a family with my husband, I could never quite articulate why, and I thought that movie would help. See, Children of Men touches on one of the same point that California does, which is that without kids, the world ends with us. And I know some people are okay with that (and I am not at all one to judge) but it’s something that I’m realizing matters very deeply to me.

California helped me understand that although I love living in my little Eden with my husband–we’ve been very comfortable here for over 19 years–we’re ready for the catalyst into the next phase of our relationship, our lives, and the world.

Regardless of where you’re at in your life of what your next steps might be with kids or otherwise, read this book. It’s one of those rare ones that I’d recommend to nearly everyone.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of California from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission. If this review made you want to go make babies, you’re welcome?